Workers at the New Era Windows Cooperative are celebrating the grand opening of their new unionized, worker-owned and -operated business. Almost a year to the day after their window factory closed, a group of former workers have launched their own window business without bosses. They successfully raised money to buy the factory collectively and run it democratically. In 2008, some of the workers were involved in a famous six-day sit-in after...

Today’s global May Day actions include a march of thousands of workers in Bangladesh demanding workplace safety following last week’s factory collapse that left more than 400 dead and 150 missing. The collapse is now being described as the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry and marked Bangladesh’s third industrial accident in five months. The building’s owner has been arrested, and a Bangladeshi...

The Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath has dominated the nation’s headlines. Yet, another series of explosions that happened two days later and took four times the number of lives, has gotten a fraction of the coverage.

The death toll in Bangladesh has topped 200 after an eight-story garment factory building collapsed with thousands of workers inside. More than 1,000 people were injured, and an unknown number of workers are still trapped in the wreckage. Cracks had been found in the building, but workers say the factory owners forced them to go to work anyway. Protests broke out in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka today as angry workers blocked key highways,...

This week’s Bangladeshi factory disaster comes five months after a massive fire killed at least 112 garment workers at Bangladesh’s Tazreen factory, which made clothing sold by Wal-Mart, among other companies. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart refused to compensate victims and their families, even though it was apparently the factory’s largest buyer. We’re joined by Sumi Abedin, a worker who survived the Tazreen fire by jumping...

In the wake of the deadly explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, reporter Mike Elk of In These Times magazine joins us to discuss the plant’s safety record and the troubling regulatory environment for workplaces in Texas and nationwide. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not inspected West Fertilizer Co. in five years, and the EPA fined the plant in 2006 for failing to have a risk management plan. Elk says OSHA is...

Oxfam has released a comprehensive report that measures how the world’s 10 largest food companies perform on food justice issues. No company emerges with passing grades. The 10 companies Oxfam scores are Associated British Foods, Coca-Cola, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever. Collectively, these companies make $1 billion a day. Oxfam based its report on seven criteria: small-scale farmers, farm...

Wal-Mart has vowed to improve safety problems among suppliers who make clothes for the company after at least 111 workers died in a deadly fire at a Bangladesh garment factory. But inspection reports found inside the facility underscore fundamental problems with how Wal-Mart’s supply chain allows it to avoid improving conditions. "One of the main monitoring companies, inspection companies for Wal-Mart, admitted that 'We...

New details have emerged in the massive bribery scandal behind Wal-Mart’s expansion into Mexico, where the corporate giant now operates one in five of its stores. After exposing the bribery earlier this year, the New York Times has now visited dozens of Mexican towns and cities to document the payoffs the company used to get its way. We’re joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter who broke the story, David...

Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder has signed into law two highly controversial anti-union bills, officially making the historic union stronghold the 24th so-called "right-to-work" state in the country. On Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators flooded the state Capitol in Lansing to denounce the bill as an organized attack against labor that will lower wages and diminish collective bargaining rights. We’re joined by two...

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